AIBU to ask school for further support with possible learning difficulties?

[OnNaturesCourse]

DC is 8 (9 at the end of the year) and in P3 at school.
We've noticed some concerns with her learning that we have highlighted over the past few years. Much of this has fallen on deaf ears at school.
Our main concern has always been DCs processing and memory related skills. For example DC can read all single numbers and letters but when writing them will almost consistently mirror write her b, d, p, q and less so will write c instead of e or vise versa. Also with 3, 7, 2 mainly but sometimes other numbers. The next part of this concern is when reading letters or numbers in a word or double digits a lot of the time DC will read these back to front so, for example, 12 becomes 21 or am will be sounded as ma instead. With a lot of work at home DCs reading of letters and reading in general has become a lot better - talking a good 10 hours a weeks at home sometimes. However the number work is just not improving. DC reports a LOT of headaches when doing maths work at school and home, and I have noticed DC going quite pale and "off" looking around the eyes (like they are tired) when working with numbers at home. DC is a very determined and knowledge hungry kid so I don't think this is a case of "faking illness to get out of something hard".
Otherwise DC quite a reserved kid, not all that social but has a good solid group of friends, and the type of kid who gets anxious easily. We had a lot of work in the early years getting DC settled into nursery and school but it seems to have paid off in the terms of DC happily goes into school, has a wonderful friend group and is easily telling us about concerns and worries. So far the school has asked us to test DCs eyes and are "monitoring".
Does this sound familiar to anyone? How can we help DC? What should the school be doing?

So, definitely get her eyes checked first and foremost. It’s an easy thing to check and I would be concerned about the amount of headaches.

I would also put more pressure on the school -“monitoring” this at her age isn’t good enough IMO. I’m a teacher but I’m based in an Ireland so not sure what the systems are like where you are - she definitely needs assessment to rule out dyslexia, dyscalculia or another learning difficulty.

That amount of extra work after school isn’t beneficial or fair on your daughter. Explain to the school how long homework is taking and ask for differentiated homework. Doing that many hours of work after a full day of school won’t help with the headaches/ eye strain and in all honesty, it doesn’t sound like it’s helping to improve the issues she’s having with letters and numbers anyway.

Hope you get some answers!

I’d definitely get her eyes tested too.

What is her behaviour like it other areas?

I should have said DC eyes have been checked out as DC is under hospital care for a eye injury at birth. All is well but DC does wear glasses to correct a lazy eye - no prescription just a prism.

I find that the school tends to fall back on this as a reason for everything however I do now have a letter from the hospital stating they do not believe DCs eyes would cause the issues. I'll be handing this in at our next meeting.

In terms of emotions... Extreme some days. Highly sensative and prone to crying at "silly" things like being told off for minor things or because someone said something with a misunderstood tone. Prone to hyper spells but nothing uncontrollable or that causes problems, just lots of energy at random times and not all the times or everyday.

She sounds a bit like my dd and we thought she might have had dyslexia at first. She eventually was diagnosed with ADHD, but the aspect of it that caused her the most issues was attention deficit, everything else was manageable. In school she struggled in a similar way to what you are describing.

The attention thing... She concentrates almost too hard and I have wondered if she's masking

Have you had a visual stress (eye test)?

DC has eye tests by hospital and Specsavers. Would that include a stress test

Just googled it and DC had that test in the hospital.

They sound like she is neurodiverse possibly DCD (dyspraxia) dd wasn't diagnosed until primary 4 but I had noticed from Nursery that she had a difference, just say everything about her moods and behaviour ask if she can be referred to an occupational therapist for an assessment, Dd did have SEN support before her diagnosis. Good luck it isn't easy when you feel nobody is listening.

I would go to your GP and ask for an OT referral for DCD and write to the school to request a referral for dyslexia and dyscalcula.

I've been told they won't test for dyslexia etc etc until DC is in P5, possibly P4 at a push 😭 I find it very unfair that DC has to work harder and struggle to keep up with the class until then. I do fear burn out for DC as they really do give 150% in school to try and mask the struggles.

My dc had a lazy eye.

he had problems moving the focus of his eyes quickly. So for example if copying something from the board he’d need to look at the board, find where he was up to, read the next bit, refocus down on his paper and write it down.

he was given a series of eye exercises to practice his ability to refocus which we did every day for about six months. School were also told about this and moved him to the front and did printouts for him rather than asking him to copy down. It did help.

the eye exercises were stuff like getting a metre long piece of string and tying three beads to it one at the end, one in the middle and one at the other end. Then practicing moving focus from beginning to middle to end and vice versa.

These sort of exercises

https://www.healthline.com/health/eye-health/lazy-eye-exercises#exercises-to-try

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. Hospital have confirmed the lazy eye has no issues other than drifting particularly when tired but doesn't do this with the glasses on. DC had corrective surgery and for the most part it was successful. But anything is worth a try!

I do think DC has more of a processing issue, like the know the answers if asked verbally in simple terms but ask something like "Susie had 9 apples and gave Jack 3 how many does Susie have left" and it takes a lot longer to think on it and work it out. Or if after being told something DC is asked to relay a small detail from it (what a character was wearing for example) they can't but if asked what colour of top the character had on they could easily tell me. Its like the information is there but it's how to extract it from DCs head.

There is no ‘referral for dyslexia’ in most LAs in England. If parents want their child tested, they will need to pay to have this done privately.

The OP mentioned P class names suggesting they are in Scotland though-I don’t know what things are like there.

My dc had similar with lazy eye (just stopped working when tired) but he didn’t get glasses so not sure of the impact there.

re the processing, a good series to practice slowly learning maths worded questions (which many kids find hard) is the Schofield and sims mental arithmetic series. You can get answers, and a page a week (I used to set it for homework) really helps. There’s six levels.

https://www.schofieldandsims.co.uk/mental-arithmetic-1/

Diagnosis is a small part, you can do quite a bit at home to improve outcomes
Have a look at word wasp website. https://wordwasp.com/ You buy the book either Word wasp or Word hornet depending on child's level - there's a simple test on website that let's you know which one to get (you can pick them up second hand online cheap). You do 10 mins a day with them at home, working through the book. Both my dyslexic kids went up 5 reading ages.
Reading eggs and Nessy are good online programmes. Primary school used lexia which is an online programme.
Numbers there's books called plus 1 and power of 2
www.thedyslexiashop.co.uk/collections/dyscalculia/Books

Thanks all.

We do reading eggs at home, and follow a online home learning reading programme throughout holidays particularly summer to give DC a boost in learning. This resulted in moving up two reading levels last year however I am scaling back the learning when school is on due to burn out fear.

I'll look into the Lexia site for sure!

Yes p4 is sadly the age they reliably test at school, dc, also saw an educational phycologist alongside the OT, i don't know if they still do that they are 30, anyway hopefully after the summer holidays you can start the process,

your child will need downtime to decompress, i see you are scaling back the at home learning that is probably a good thing.

In terms of the waiting until P4 is that a age thing? As DC was a late P1 start so they are ages with P4s already at 8.

Dyslexia isn't normally tested for until around age 8. As per a pp though, I don't know of any areas in England that offer dyslexia or dyscalculia testing - Scotland might be the same. Schools can do their own screening which might show something like 'at risk of dyslexia'. Schools should be adopting dyslexia friendly techniques for all children anyway and I hate to say it but I've never read anything ground-breaking in a private dyslexia report - it's really just what is considered good classroom practice nowadays anyway.

Scotland does internal screening and I believe this then leds onto assessments if the child is struggling to keep up /cope but I could be wrong. I really don't have a clue but I'm sick tired of seeing DC struggle but be overlooked because DC behaves and won't bring attention to themselves

DD2 has dyspraxia and really struggled in lower primary. She would write 3 words in an hour but could give a good verbal answer to everything so it wasn't an understanding issue. She's now 22 and has straight As in both her Nat 5s and Highers plus some AHs too. She also did two and a half years of a very hard uni course before her mental health resulted in her dropping out but she has found a good job (the company created it for her when she applied for a basic admin role but they reckoned they could use her skills in a different role).

She had 2 years of OT between P4 and P6 plus some ed psych input. NHS GGC had a fantastic OT programme called Rainbow Gym which built up her coordination, her fine motor skills and her gross motor skills and that helped a lot, plus it really built her confidence. She also did the Speed Up writing programme and OT provided her with a sloping board for her desk in school and a couple of textured cushions (one for school and one for home). Pencil grips also helped as did Stabilo Easy Grip pens and pencils.
The school did a dyslexia test before they referred her for the dyspraxia assessment. I would definitely ask for your DD to be referred for dyspraxia assessment as she sounds like my DD at the same age.